William Eggleston born in Memphis in 1939 and is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium.  Since the early 1960s, William Eggleston used color photographs to describe the cultural transformations in Tennessee and the rural South. He registers these changes in scenes of everyday life, such as portraits of family and friends, as well as gasoline stations, cars, things that wee see everyday but never top to apreacte the beauty in these things. Switching from black and white to color in 1956 which then colour transparency became his dominant medium.

The book ‘William Eggleston At Zenith’ was created in 2013. He describes his book as“my childhood and adulthood escapes unexpectedly met each other.” 

In an interview by Shahrzad Kamel from ASX magazine William Eggleston describes the book in a lot of detail and goes into the meaning behind it. Within the interview he talks about how he use to lie on the grass as a child and stare up at the sky while forgetting everything. He describes how he watched them move for hours while raising his hands to the sky. He says, “I wished I could touch them, I would dream of riding away on one; imaginary transportation to another universe.” The book contains abstract images of the sky and moving clouds. Although the concept is relatively simple, the meaning and spiritual connotations behind the idea is very powerful. Eggleston wanted his images to be artistic, and to resemble paintings and well as photographic images.

At first I didn’t like this project as I thought that the concept was very simple and the images would be very similar to each other and therefore boring. But I actually really like the simplicity of the images. The contrasting with the white is very eye catching for the viewer, which is something that I want to focus on doing throughout my project. The images are abstract but yet anybody even if they aren’t used to abstract work in photography they will be able to understand and appreciate the images. When he presented this project the environment was plain white which made the images stand out a lot more as the blue is contrasting to the white.

My response to ‘William Eggleston At Zenith’

I took these images whilst I was doing a separate shoot, as I wasn’t focusing that much on getting these image, this is why I don’t really like these images. What I don’t like about the images is that all are very similar to each other, I took these image at mid day so I think that if I took them sunrise or sunset, I think that this would some colour and variety in the images. Or if I took images f the clouds throughout the day there would be more variety in the pattern of the clouds this would make the images more interesting

Shoot 1: My first shoot will be In the style of Keld-Helmer Peterson. I will look for interesting colouful objects around Jersey I will select my strongest images that supports the theme and style of variation and similarity.

Shoot 2: My second shoot will be City based. I will take a variety of images in London during the day. Some being abstract and others not. This is to create a subtle link to a supporting image using the same colour combinations.

Shoot 3: My third shoot will be in Hyde Park in london. The plan for this shoot is to capture the natural elements in Londons Hyde park. I thought it would be very interesting to visit the area as it visualizes what the area around London would have looked like before mans existence. This will be an experimentation shoot. I want to capture the nature

Shoot 4: My final shoot will be during the night. I decided that i should take images of colour under a dark influence to contrast with daytime images of the othershoots. This would give the images a different feel to them with the new contrasts and tones.

My idea is to photograph colours and shapes in objects and buildings. I am specifically going to be looking for areas, buildings and objects that have multiple colours. I will produce most of my images whilst in London. London is packed with really historical buildings and at the same time is packed with modern structures. I want to explore how colours patterns and shapes have vary and developed as new design themes were popularised. I will capture both abstract, portrait and landscape images. I drew my inspiration from Siegfried Hansen, Saul Leiter and Keld Helmer-Petersen. All pioneers of colour photography.

The Disposable Camera Project was created in 2014 by the Colour Box Studio .Which is a Melbourne based pop up art space and online creative hub. The director, Amie Batalibasi, decided to do a project in which she gave nine participants a disposable camera and where asked to fill up the camera in the space of 24 hours. The project had been going on for 3 years. Each of the participants have their unique style and perceptions. What they view as a good image all varies. The project achieved a vast difference in style of images and subject. A book was created containing all the images called “The Disposable Camera Project.”

What this project does that can’t really be achieved with the use of digital cameras, is the sense of freedom but at the same time develops the photographic process to be thoughtful. As with a film camera you have a limited amount of images before the film runs out. But unlike digital cameras you are not able to look back and view the image, so there is one take to get the time right so each shot is thought through a lot more.But with this project id gives freedom with photography for people who might not be used to using a camera and to be able to capture scenarios and landscapes in a pure and simple way.